


Learning to Fly

by Bandtrees



Series: Dead Boy Rising: JD/Veronica Swap AU [3]
Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Animal Death, Break Up, F/F, Illustrated, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, One-Shot, POV Veronica, Property Destruction, Veronica/JD Swap AU, animal cruelty, swap au, takes place before dead boy rising act 1, well theres a relevant doodle at th end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22944793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bandtrees/pseuds/Bandtrees
Summary: The Heathers had layers, Ronnie had learned from her time with them. Beneath the popular girl allure and rockstar mystique, they were human like everyone else at Westerburg. It shouldn’t have been a revelation — of course they weren’t just the flat, one-dimensional bitches everyone saw.They were worse.
Relationships: Heather McNamara/Veronica Sawyer (past)
Series: Dead Boy Rising: JD/Veronica Swap AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/635720
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Learning to Fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheArtisticIntrovert](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArtisticIntrovert/gifts).



> ...okay so I know we haven't touched Dead Boy Rising since 2017, but relistening to Heathers made me wanna revisit this AU! Villain!Veronica is a concept I adore and I wanted to explore her mind and violent streak some :] 
> 
> TW for animal cruelty in the paragraph that starts with 'She didn't even remember', property destruction, as well as small references to self-harm.
> 
> I should clarify, this being a roleswap AU, it is NOT how I view Veronica's character in canon, or anybody else's for that matter. This AU is its fun little hodgepodge, and if you haven't read the main fic, go and check it out! It's written by my good pal Ty (who I dedicate this fic to) and while it's old it's still real good and very worth checking out.
> 
> Enjoy!

The Heathers had layers, Ronnie had learned from her time with them. Beneath the popular girl allure and rockstar mystique, they were human like everyone else at Westerburg. It shouldn’t have been a revelation — of  _ course _ they weren’t just the flat, one-dimensional bitches everyone saw.

They were worse. 

Having the audacity to take her in, to  _ help _ her, and then just discard her like a piece of trash when she no longer fit their cookie-cutter model of popularity, not caring what being trashed by the  _ Heathers _ would do to her reputation, was the gravest insult imaginable.

Through it all, she did what she could to remind herself of what they  _ were _ . Heather Duke had been friends with Martha, though Ronnie didn’t speak to her during that time. She couldn’t discard Heather Chandler’s moments of real friendship with her, the makeovers and (honestly back-handed) pep talks. And, of course, her closeness with Heather McNamara — the love the bubbly cheerleader filled her with, the first she’d felt in her life… 

And yet, they did what they did anyway.  _ They could be beautiful  _ was no longer a reassurance, but a lament. It began to disgust Ronnie — they were good people, everyone at Westerburg had the potential to be, but they continued to act horrific to one another. A switch had been flipped some time in middle school, and she hated to admit that she wasn’t as above it as she thought she was. She didn’t realize how jaded she’d become until her mother stopped her after school one night to talk about seeing a psychiatric in Cleveland, and she just managed to talk her out of it. 

She was already at the bottom of the high school social ladder after being discarded by the most popular girls around, and she wasn’t about to make it worse by letting herself be sent to a shrink. 

Her parents had always guarded her like hawks, watching her for any signs of the suicidal teenagers they’d heard horror stories of. They were always pushing new ways to keep her happy, and they never worked. Her mom said that keeping a journal would help her release her anger, but that only snowballed it. Every time she opened her diary to see the furious scribbles or self-loathing rants from the day before, those feelings were reignited tenfold. It was a twisted cycle, but the only coping mechanism she had that didn’t involve hurting herself or somebody else.

“People like bad girls! Adds intrigue, y’know?” Heather McNamara had reassured her when Veronica talked about how she smoked and burned herself, which should’ve been her first cue that no Heather was capable of empathy, but her standards for decent human beings were so low that she didn’t think anything of it. 

She  _ really  _ thought she could make them change, she recalled bitterly. She really thought Heather McNamara was different from her friends, when she sneered at their victims and treated the student body like garbage just as they did. She was a sniveling coward, Ronnie found, who never bothered to offer her girlfriend comfort or care — the only thing Ronnie  _ wanted _ . She seemed almost embarrassed of her, keeping their relationship secret and looking frightened and disgusted every time Veronica opened up to her. 

Rage consumed her when the last of countless arguments along the lines of “you don’t want me around, do you?” ended with Heather confirming her suspicions. She’d stormed out sobbing from her own home, no doubt seeking refuge from the only friends she really liked. Leaving the girl she’d been using for sex, an ego stroke, or  _ whatever  _ it was she wanted in the dust. Veronica’s hands were involuntarily trembling as one of the last threads of her sanity was cut away. She was no different from them, she knew, but that made it no less frustrating.

Veronica knew she may as well have been a dead girl walking after what Heather would cry to her friends. She was convinced they were just waiting for the chance to get rid of her. She wanted to hurt them more than anything, and had to force her hand away from the lighter in her pocket. 

She paced Heather’s tiles until she began to feel she’d left a mark. She trashed the glass sculptures in Heather’s room, and accidentally cut her middle finger open on a shard, but the fire inside her didn’t fade. Like the rage she felt reading her diary, it only burned hotter and hotter. The machinery of the rotary phone in Heather’s room splintered beneath Veronica’s foot, the posters and cheerleading squad pictures ripped through with a pen from the girl’s desk. It cracked in her grip as she stabbed into the wall with it, but it wasn’t enough. Ruining the material possessions McNamara held so dear, even more than Veronica, wasn’t enough. 

Ink stained her hands, alongside the perfect blazer that McNamara had picked out for her, but there was no relief in it. She could barely take in air through her adrenalized hyperventilating, and there was a point in her aggression where she completely lost focus of the world around her. 

All she knew was that she woke up at home, at around three in the morning. She wasn’t even sure how she managed to drive safely, but she was home and away from Heather, so that’s what mattered. Her hands were cramped, with various slices, stains, and welts received in the violent episode from the night before. She hadn’t done anything that bad since middle school, but the anger she felt and had no way to truly express would’ve hit a boil at one point.

She managed to make herself look presentable for school, having been taught by one of the Heathers how to hide bruises with foundation. She wasn’t sure how it translated to cuts, but nobody looked that close. Hopefully. The cold water splashed in her face and sprayed into her hair gave her a sense of clarity, but only made her feel worse at what she’d done.

Heather McNamara wasn’t at school, and Veronica wasn’t sure if she was grateful or not. She was stopped by Heather Chandler and given a hate-filled rant about how cruel and petty she’d been. Veronica knew that — but she couldn’t help but laugh that it was coming from the Red Heather herself. 

She didn’t even remember pouring bleach into Heather McNamara’s fish tank until Chandler brought it up, but she was thankful the only thing she hurt that night was an animal. She would be lying if she said she didn’t feel like hurting Heather more.

Her heart was thundering in her chest over anything was saying when she was kicked out of the posse for good two days later — not coincidentally the same day Heather McNamara returned to school. Befitting of her color motif, McNamara was uncharacteristically meek, hiding behind her green-dressed companion as if her ex-girlfriend would kill her with a look. Veronica couldn’t even come up with a witty comeback to Chandler, only able to turn tail and lock herself into the bathroom for the next class period. 

They thought she was some kind of monster, surely. Picking on the poor innocent McNamara, when Veronica knew more than anybody else that the girl was far from it. She knew she looked like hell when she returned to class, hair frazzled and dark eyes shadowed, saying nothing to anyone who stopped her. She vented to her diary until her pencil snapped in half, barely taking in any of what was happening around her. 

Following that, Ronnie returned to her roots. Like hell she was going to parade around in the fancy outfits and makeup tips the Heathers had given her — that would only give them more shit to talk. She looked like a slob again, coming to school in woolens and scarves and that  _ very _ dumb-looking monocle, but there was comfort in it. She didn’t have to walk on eggshells wondering what was and wasn’t good for the Heathers’ image, and could finally go back to hanging around Betty and Martha — even as she sensed they feared her just as her ex-friends did.

She felt it with Martha in particular, and even though they’d been friends since diapers, that just gave the curly-haired girl better insight to how suddenly hateful Ronnie had gotten. She loved Martha, she really did, but the other could never hope to understand the hell that was being on the top of everything with the Heathers. What little faith she had left in humanity had taken a nosedive. It took all of her resolve to remind herself they were still kids, but fuck, if they were only kids  _ now _ how  _ worse _ were they all going to be later? 

She was back to the outcast nerd she was before forging that note for the Heathers, and it gave her conflicting feelings. It was less restrictive, and truer to Ronnie Sawyer, but she couldn’t help but resent them for throwing her back down to the bottom of the social ladder. People gave her even more snide looks than before — a nerd who’d had a bad run-in with the Heathers was far more curious than your run of the mill nerd — but she never indulged their curiosity. They didn’t deserve the details of her personal life, and nor did they Heather’s.

The pit in her stomach that had been settling the past few weeks — despite her friends’ attempts to comfort her — worsened when she saw a short dark-haired boy she didn’t recognize wandering around with the Heathers. Duke passed a black coat to him, and Ronnie knew the green Heather didn’t offer her hemming skills to any random stranger. She watched him converse with the trio, part jealous, moreso angered by their audacity, but mostly pitiful towards the boy. He likely had no clue what he was getting into — had she been replaced  _ already _ ? 

“Hey, Heather,” she heard the boy ask, in an mixed accent it took a moment for her to pin as mostly Southern, “who’s that girl back there, in the scarf? She keeps glaring at me.”

Heather Duke cocked her head, looking past the rookie to make eye contact with Ronnie, who couldn’t even pretend she was preoccupying herself with her notebook. The girl turned back and scoffed, eyes hard. “Veronica Sawyer. If you know what’s good for you,  _ don’t  _ talk to her, got it?”

Of  _ course _ . 

Ronnie’s fingers curled around the spirals of her notebook, leaving crimson imprints when they pulled away. She knew damn well by now she was nothing but gum on their stupidly expensive heels, but seeing it confirmed reignited the fire she felt that night in McNamara’s home. She heard Heather Chandler snap at the new guy, calling him Jason — Jason, Jason, she’d have to remember that — and to her surprise, he talked back to her.

By his demeanor, he wasn’t a suck-up as much as he was someone the Heathers seemed to have latched onto, no doubt using their ‘hospitality’ in teaching him to spread his wings and learn to fly as a way to manipulate him. It all seemed to bounce off of him, regarding the Heathers with flippancy any other Westerburg student wouldn’t be caught dead with. 

Ronnie smiled to herself, perhaps the first real smile she’d made this month, not caring for how odd it made her look. Her eyes didn’t leave his back for the rest of the lunch period. 

This was going to be fun to watch.


End file.
